My favorite explanation of the spiritual soul is that it is our consciousness. Our ability to recognize that we exist and recognize ourselves as individuals. Of course it's all BS... Everyone knows ones soul is found in their ability to enjoy certain types of music and in ones dancing skills.

If the first definition is the accepted rule than we humans wouldn’t be the only ones with a soul apparently. Chimps, orangutans, dolphins, and elephants have the ability to recognize themselves and think on an individual level. So clearly humans wouldn’t be the only creature bestowed with a soul. Makes one question if we would share a heaven with apes, dolphins, and elephants? After all if god cares enough for these creatures to give them a coveted soul would they not enjoy the same afterlife?

I have watched people die including my own mother. I have taken care of brain-dead patients who were on life support waiting for their organs to be harvested. In people it's more than cell by cell. It's more like organ system by organ system. What we refer to as the "soul" seems to disappear long before the vital signs cease.

Logged

It doesn't make sense to let go of something you've had for so long. But it also doesn't make sense to hold on when there's actually nothing there.

My dogs are more sentient than some people I know (severely handicapped cousins). My dogs have emotions, attachments, memories ... even as a child I thought the complete separation of animals from humans was absurd. We are all animals. I see no difference that could be a soul. None at all. So, the average person is more intelligent than the average dog? So what? If the abrahamic god exists, apparently those cousins have a soul but my dogs don't. Even though my dogs can interact with me, can communicate with me, have moods, can ask for things, can respond appropriately to stimuli ... and my cousins cannot.

Logged

If we ever travel thousands of light years to a planet inhabited by intelligent life, let's just make patterns in their crops and leave.

My dogs are more sentient than some people I know (severely handicapped cousins). My dogs have emotions, attachments, memories ... even as a child I thought the complete separation of animals from humans was absurd. We are all animals. I see no difference that could be a soul. None at all. So, the average person is more intelligent than the average dog? So what? If the abrahamic god exists, apparently those cousins have a soul but my dogs don't. Even though my dogs can interact with me, can communicate with me, have moods, can ask for things, can respond appropriately to stimuli ... and my cousins cannot.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Genesis 1:26)Man was made in god's image to rule over the animals. Man was made superior to the "beasts" of the earth. I would assume that the soul of a human would be superior to that of an animal as well. Also Christ died for humans not animals. So I don’t think god cares at all about your dogs... I don’t recall any scripture about animals in heaven either. So the afterlife aint looking good for Fido.

Yup, G-Roll, the abrahamic religions do teach that humans are "above" the animals. That attitude has led to a lot of evil, up to and including massive destruction of habitat, species, and indigenous peoples. Personally, I find this kind of attitude to be one of the worst evils of religion, and if flies in the face of much of what we know about the world.

Logged

If we ever travel thousands of light years to a planet inhabited by intelligent life, let's just make patterns in their crops and leave.

I don't "know" what death is. I remember an episode of The Mentalist entitled, "Then, It's Gone". In it Patrick Jane has an antagonistic, one upsman relationship with the medical examiner. But Jane catches something about the ME that others do not see--that he has a serious illness, one that the ME knew would kill him. In the end the ME asked Jane if he could be with him while he took his life via a drug overdose because with someone from the police present at the time of death there would be no need for an autopsy--something he had performed on so many others.

Jane said he didn't think he could do that and then went into the kitchen to make himself some tea, leaving the ME alone (he knew what was happening). When he came back and sat down near the ME he showed him a simple sleight of hand coin trick, repeating it while each time saying, "It's there, then it's not" as the ME slipped away, thanking Jane before it was over. Jane then took the cup of tea from his hand before it could spill.

For me that was both moving and compassionate, with Jane helping the passing of a man with whom for the episode he did not hate but had a kind of gotcha relationship. That's how I see death--you're there, then you're not.

I thought of this after I recently went through through a medical procedure, the one you get every 10 years and have to drink the disgusting liquid the day before in preparation. I underwent anesthesia and I distinctly remember being in the procedure room and then the next thing I was awake in my recovery room. It was like a light had simply gone off--I was there, then I was not. For me, that is how I see death and I only hope my own will be that simple and easy.

I thought of this after I recently went through through a medical procedure, the one you get every 10 years and have to drink the disgusting liquid the day before in preparation. I underwent anesthesia and I distinctly remember being in the procedure room and then the next thing I was awake in my recovery room. It was like a light had simply gone off--I was there, then I was not. For me, that is how I see death and I only hope my own will be that simple and easy.

I've had those, and I know exactly what you mean. You're there....then nothing. I can roll with that.

A British team captured the final moments a tiny, transparent ground worm's life by tracking a blue fluorescence molecule that travels through the organism's cells as it dies.

No souls found.

To pull this back to the OP.....I reckon most Christians (as G-Roll suggested) would look at you in confusion and say "of COURSE no souls were found - worms don't have holes, you silly billy, only people have souls". And within their theology, they would be quite correct - that experiment proves nothing. Now, if we could track a molecule through a human, that would be something else. Trouble is, the believers still wouldn't care, I'd wager. It'd be "yes, when that blue light went out, that was when the soul left. We can't detect souls when human are alive, why would you expect to be able to detect when one went?"

We can't detect immortal souls. We can't detect any sign of souls at all. As has been said, there are living human beings who show less evidence of sentience and less personality than a pet cat, rat or dog.

Some religious people are afraid that, if humans don't have souls, then people are not worth any more than animals, or insects, or dirt. There is an assumption that non-soul humans will be mistreated. As if the only reason to value a person's life is a supernatural one...Strange, how the belief that people had immortal souls did not prevent slavery, genocide or gender oppression.

I don't know of any atheist who thinks that people should be treated badly, because they don't have immortal souls. It means that we are all part of the natural world, and our existence is limited. It means that the earth is not just here for us. And when an organism dies, it is gone forever. If anything, it means that we should be treating the animals and plants of the world better, not that we should be treating people worse.

If there be a life after death[1],[2] clearly the agent or subject of our vital activities must be capable of an existence separate from the body. The belief in an animating principle in some sense distinct from the body[3] is an almost[4] inevitable inference from the observed facts of life. Even uncivilized peoples arrive at the concept of the soul almost without reflection[5], certainly without any severe mental effort[6]. The mysteries of birth and death[7], the lapse of conscious life during sleep[8] and in swooning, even the commonest operations of imagination and memory, which abstract a man from his bodily presence even while awake[9]—all such facts invincibly suggest the existence of something besides the visible organism[10] internal to it, but to a large extent independent of it, and leading a life of its own.[11]

I can only conclude that, after all those years of deep thought and lamp-lit discussion, they still have no idea what they are talking about.

However, science has not slept during that time and has come up with real answers about the real world. Yet still there are those whose thoughts are mored in the 4th century.

Here the writer attempts to draw a parallel between sleep and death. This was popular up to the early 20th century. Remember the gravestone, “Not dead, only sleeping.” To which Spike Milligan replied, “Who’s he kidding?”

Even uncivilized peoples arrive at the concept of the soul almost without reflection, certainly without any severe mental effort.

This is hilarious. They think this helps make their case. Paraphrased: "Uneducated people instinctively believe this without really thinking about too much, let alone investigating it or doing experiments, so it must be true." The same could be said of the belief in a flat earth.